CBC should be sold: Report ...

The CBC is a money-losing state broadcaster that should be stripped of $1.16 billion in public handouts, says a new report.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Studies argues the broadcaster fails to deliver true dollar value to taxpayers, and it lacks neutrality in its news reporting and accountability.

“The CBC is a world-class broadcaster,” says the report written by David Krayden. “It is for that very reason that we believe that the CBC can survive without a yearly infusion of unearned income.”

Read the full story here.

CBC running scared ...

CBC running scared: State broadcaster's false attack ads demonstrate how financial probe is desperately needed.

On the eve of the Parliamentary inquiry, it used part of its $1.1 billion — money that is supposed to go to journalism — to launch a crazy, personal attack on the president of Quebecor and QMI Agency, Pierre Karl Peladeau, one of Canada’s most successful private-sector media entrepreneurs.

Unlike the CBC, Peladeau built his company honestly and with his own efforts. He took a newspaper company started by his father, Pierre Peladeau, and turned it into Quebec’s most successful media company, Quebecor — and then joined with English-Canada’s biggest newspaper company, Sun Media Corp. And then he built the Sun News Network.

All without a billion-dollar-a-year bailout.

Read the full story here.

CCPS Executive Directror discusses privatizing the CBC ...

Canadian Centre for Policy Studies Executive Director David Krayden discusses privatizing the CBC with host Ron Corbett on Ottawa radio station CFRA.

Click here to listen to the interview.

CBC: Canadian Bash Corp

Best feature at taxpayer-funded TIFF party for ‘cool people’ — riot gates to keep non-cool folks at bay

The CBC — and the more than 10 government unions who live off it — are having a party while the rest of the economy has been under stress.

Literally, a party. A month ago, the CBC threw a luxurious party at the Hazelton, Canada’s most exquisite hotel, during the Toronto International Film Festival. They blocked off the street, and had stars like the band U2 on their red carpet.

The CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos hosted the party. But he isn’t in any film. He just wanted to — in his words — party with “cool people.” That’s what he said.

One of the things that made the party expensive was the police-style riot gates to keep ordinary taxpayers at bay. Remember, they had to block off the city streets to really party hard. But that might have meant some non-cool taxpayers might have wandered in.
Read the full story here.

CBC’s nepotism and Hubert Lacroix’s weird emails ...

Lacroix recently replied to such an angry email, including me in the loop.

The original email concerned a complaint that has been circulating in TV industry circles for some time, Kirstine Stewart, the woman who heads up English Television for CBC is now engaged to a star of the network, one who is now also getting production contracts with the state broadcaster.

Stewart’s fiancé is Zaib Shaikh the star of Little Mosque on the Prairie and head of his own production company. Turns out, according to this email and others I have received in the past…..members of the TV industry are griping about favouritism and conflict of interest at the CBC.

According to the original email complaining, Zaib Shaikh, who is slated to be the executive producer of a big 75^th anniversary broadcast but due to griping, people inside the state broadcaster want his name pulled.

Read the full story here.

Longtime CBC exec Sylvain Lafrance is leaving the public broadcaster this fall

Longtime CBC exec Sylvain Lafrance is leaving the public broadcaster this fall, CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix announced in a release late Thursday.

The announcement follows the recent settlement of a lawsuit filed against Lafrance by Quebecor head Pierre Karl Péladeau regarding a comment Lafrance made in a 2007 interview in which he called Péladeau a voyou, a derogatory French term meaning “thug” or “delinquent.”

Read the full story here.

Tory MPs call pundits, cable firms to testify on CBC access fight ...

The Conservatives are calling on some of the CBC's harshest critics to testify about the broadcaster at a parliamentary hearing on access to information.

The Commons committee is studying the CBC's current battle in the courts to keep some of its records exempt from access-to-information laws.

The Tories say they are concerned about the fact taxpayers are on the hook for both sides of a court battle pitting the CBC against the information commissioner.

Read the full story here.

Judge suspends Quebecor defamation case against CBC exec ...

Quebec’s highest court has suspended Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau's defamation case against a CBC French executive while Quebecor tries to have the presiding judge removed for alleged bias.

 Peladeau, owner of QMI Agency, is suing CBC French vice-president Sylvain Lafrance for $700,000 for calling Peladeau a “punk” in a 2007 newspaper interview.

Read the full story by clicking here.

CBC releases blank pages on super-expensive computer system ...

 A CBC audit of a computer system that went $30 million over budget has been released, but it is mostly blank pages.


Project Vision, an internal CBC project to replace as many as 45 different computer systems, was started in 2002 and was supposed to cost $33 million. When Auditor General Sheila Fraser sounded the alarm in 2005 costs had already reached $51 million.

According to previously released documents the final tally was just shy of $63 million.
Currently, CBC is fighting the federal information commissioner in court to prevent the release of information. Lacroix has indicated that he will take this fight to Supreme Court in order to keep CBC's documents under wraps.

Read the full story here.

What do YOU think?

Expert tells committee CBC went too far in refusing to release info ...

The CBC overstepped the boundaries of federal access laws when it refused to release information to the public, an expert in access law told MPs Thursday.


“It appears the CBC went above and beyond simply protecting its journalistic integrity,” Michel Drapeau testified before the House committee on access to information, privacy and ethics.

He criticized the CBC for its “blatant and ill-disguised” attempts to delay information release.

Read the full story here.

CBC guilty of defamation ...

Canada's public broadcaster will not get an audience with the country's top court to challenge costly defamation judgments against its investigative program the fifth estate.

The Supreme Court of Canada gave no reasons Thursday for refusing to hear the case, as is usual in high-court appeal applications.

The CBC was ordered in 2000 to pay nearly $1-million in defamation damages to medical scientist Dr. Frans Leenen of the University of Ottawa and $200,000 to Dr. Martin Myers, a Toronto cardiologist.

The award damages are among the largest ever imposed on a Canadian media outlet.

Read the full story here.

Taxpayers pony up for CBC exec's wine, trips ....

Taxpayers footed the bill for bottles of wine over lingering lunches and business-class trips to Paris by a top CBC executive, documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show.

Claims submitted by Sylvain Lafrance in 2007 and 2008 also show the executive vice-president of CBC’s French services did not publicly disclose all of his expenses, including pricey meals with other CBC managers, on the public broadcaster’s website.

He flew first class across the country, spending $1,109.43 a return flight from Montreal to Toronto and $2,620.07 on a trip to St. John’s, N.L., as well as international destinations such as New York and Paris, where he attends TV5 board meetings.
Flights for a 48-hour stopover in Paris cost $4,821.09; airfare for another three-day trip cost $5,802.70.
CBC’s travel policy states “the standard for air travel is economy” and the “lowest logical airfares available” should be sought.

Read the full story here.

CBC secrecy hurts its own cause ...

The federal government has demanded that the CBC explain its use of exemptions to the Access to Information Act to shield details of its financial activities from curious eyes. The act is a piece of federal legislation that, in theory, grants the public the right to review most of the information available to government-owned institutions. There are reasonable limits, of course — privacy of citizens is protected, as are sensitive intelligence, military, police and diplomatic records (as they should be). But the CBC also has a specific exemption — it is not required to divulge information related to its “journalistic, creative or programming activities.”

But there is suspicion among some vocal CBC critics that the broadcaster is using those exemptions, on pretexts that are flimsy at best, to conceal potentially embarrassing details of spending on executive travel and hospitality charges.

Read the full story here.

Should The CBC Be Privatized?

The Canadian Centre for Policy Studies today released a discussion paper calling on the federal government to privatize the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Selling the CBC will not only save taxpayers $1.16 billion per annum (3.6% of the projected deficit in fiscal 2011-2012) it will also raise revenue that can be applied to the debt," said the paper's author and executive director of the CCPS, David Krayden.

Read the full story here.

New Petition Launched!

It is now official ... the CBC and the Liberal Party of Canada are in bed together.

See the "Hands Off Our CBC" petition sponsored by the Liberal Party by clicking here.  Pretty evident isn't it?

OUR website is not sponsored by any Party ... we are just ordinary Canadians concerned with how our tax dollars are being wasted ... especially by the CBC.

Read our blog ... we are just trying to show that the CBC is not accountable and is wasting taxpayer money.

We ask you and everyone you know to sign our petition ... be a part of the solution!

Liberals defend ‘vital’ CBC funding ...

The federal Liberals are trying to tap a well of potential support by positioning themselves as defenders of the CBC.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae sent out a letter on Thursday announcing a campaign and online petition called “Hands Off our CBC.” People on the party distribution list are asked to tweet about the petition or post it to their Facebook page.

Read the full story here.

Familiar Troubles for Canada's National Broadcaster ...

While the evolving media landscape poses new challenges, the CBC remains entangled in a balancing act it has faced since its inception.

As the CBC celebrates its 75th birthday this year, it faces huge challenges. Like all conventional broadcasters, its audiences are being whittled away and diverted by the new media. And, like many public broadcasters, it is suffering from the fragmentation of the market and the drying up of government support and revenues.

Read the full story here.

Best strategy for CBC now is to 'come clean' on requests ...

CBC/Radio-Canada should “come clean” and give up its fight against the release of records under the Access to Information Act, former TV news producer Howard Bernstein told the House of Commons ethics committee Thursday.

The CBC's battle to keep records under wraps gives Quebecor Media Inc. more ammunition to target the broadcaster, he said.

“I cannot agree with the CBC when they say that the release of this information would put them at a disadvantage,” Bernstein told the committee.

Read the full story here.

What do YOU think?

CBC gets kid-glove treatment ...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is used to criticizing others — often, quite viciously. But it sure doesn’t react well when it is the mega-corporation being scrutinized.

Last week their president, Hubert Lacroix, lashed out at critics who are asking basic accountability questions about the CBC.

To Lacroix, having to answer for the CBC’s mismanagement, luxurious perks and wasteful spending isn’t acceptable. In a new conspiracy theory he shared with a friendly reporter, Lacroix says questions about CBC’s secrecy and lack of accountability are just attempts to “weaken” the CBC. He says it’s a scheme cooked up by his competitors — and he mentions the Sun specifically.

Read the full story here.

What do YOU think?

CBC braces for $100 million in cuts ...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is bracing for upwards of $100 million in service cuts from their $1.1 billion annual budget. The expected move has many people questioning the government's commitment to public broadcasting.

The difference is stark between the post-election Heritage Minister who spoke out in support of maintaining funding levels for the CBC, and the Heritage Minister of today who argues the CBC deserves no special treatment.

Read the full story here.

What do YOU think?

CBC blocking e-mail complaints about Radio 2, watchdog says ...

OTTAWA -- A Canadian radio and TV watchdog is accusing the taxpayer-funded CBC of blocking e-mail complaints sent by listeners to the broadcaster's president and chairman.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which launched a campaign Saturday against the format overhaul of CBC's Radio 2, says complaints sent to CBC president Hubert Lacroix and the executive assistant to CBC chairman Timothy Casgrain were rejected. Each e-mail was bounced back with an automatic message saying the system sending the e-mails -- a message transfer agent or MTA -- has a "poor reputation."

Read the full story here.

Radio-Canada broadcaster suspended after defamatory Facebook comments ...

A prominent Quebec broadcast journalist has been suspended by Radio-Canada for comments he made on Facebook about another journalist.

Pierre Sormany heads the investigative journalism department at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s French-language arm. Last week, he posted comments on the Facebook page of another journalist referring to claims by Quebec’s anti-collusion boss that some of the news media were trying to intimidate him ....


Read the full story here.

CBC boss says rivals have an interest in diminishing public broadcaster ...

The CBC's top boss says one of its major competitors is determined to damage the reputation of the public broadcaster in order to weaken it and he's determined to set the record straight on Parliament Hill.


MPs will be examining the CBC's current court battle with the Information Commissioner over access to information beginning Thursday. The Conservatives pushed for the study this fall, saying Canadians were concerned that the taxpayer was funding both sides of a case that hits the Federal Court of Appeals on Oct. 18.

At the same time, the Conservative Party of Canada is polling its members on the value of the CBC, the National Citizens Coalition has mounted a campaign to defund the CBC, and the Sun Media chain has published a months-long series of articles and editorials targeting the Crown Corporation for its refusal to provide expense information requested under access to information.

Read the full story here.

CBC's Tax Dollars Cost Canadians Too Much ...

By functioning on government subsidies of (at least) $1.1 BILLION annually, the CBC has an obligation to let the public know how this money is spent. This is so obvious that an opinion poll is redundant.

By keeping salaries secret, gratuities secret, entertainment costs secret, travel costs secret, absentee costs secret, the CBC is violating its mandate and should be an embarrassment for every CBC employee.

The CBC is not a private company. We all have a right to know how it spends the money taxpayers provide.

Read the full story here.

CBC Cuts: 10 Per Cent Budget Reduction Sought By Tories ...

Heritage Minister James Moore wants to slash CBC’s budget by 10 per cent, The Huffington Post has learned.

Although a government decision is far from complete, Moore has discussed his wish to see the public broadcaster’s $1.1-billion allocation cut by ten per cent, sources said. Moore had earlier this summer suggested the CBC could face a cut of "at least 5 per cent."

Read the full story here.

CBC Executive Racks Up $80K Tab ...

Ever wonder where your tax dollars really go? Some of it apparently goes to the tax payer-funded CBC, who in turn uses it to rack up $80,000 in theatre tickets, meals and travel.

Read the full story here.